amazing-digital-virus

[buzzybaron]

For your Virus AU, Pomni noticed that some of the abstractions weren't as far gone as the others. Is that going to play a part down the line?

Without spoiling too much, yes, the abstractions will eventually play a part down the line. It won't be until close to the end of the story though.

[vonvuuu]

I don’t think we ever heard a genuine laugh from Caine before, it’s always like- exaggerated or for show. (Not complaining, I find it endearing and funny)

That’s what made me think of this idea. It makes sense for this particular Caine to take on more human attributes. :)

Heartful AU by @filthyfuckingcainestan

[buzzybaron]

The logical conclusion of Pomni being a socially inept computer virus in the Trojan Heart AU is that Gangle probably isn't going to trust her on the front register for the Spudsy's adventure. She will likely swap her out for Ragatha, which means Pomni is going to get dosed with the stupid sauce. What will that do to a computer virus? Consider the following.

Pomni: Hey there, hot mama! Ragatha: P-Pomni!? What are you- Pomni: Are you all alone on a late night? Ragatha: Gangle! I think there's something wrong with- Pomni: Doctors HATE her! Click here to receive free healthcare tips! Number five will surprise you! Ragatha: ...what? Pomni: *winks* there are hot singles in your area She will completely forget this, but Ragatha will be left with scars for life. And possibly a girlfriend.

[buzzybaron]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 4/? Fandom: The Amazing Digital Circus (Web Series) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Caine & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni & Ragatha (The Amazing Digital Circus), Jax & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Kinger & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus) Characters: Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Caine (The Amazing Digital Circus), Kinger (The Amazing Digital Circus), Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus), Ragatha (The Amazing Digital Circus), Zooble (The Amazing Digital Circus), Gangle (The Amazing Digital Circus) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Pomni Needs a Hug (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni-centric (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni Has a Bad Time (The Amazing Digital Circus), Touch-Averse Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Touch-Starved Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), yes she is both, Parental Kinger (The Amazing Digital Circus), Caine Tries (The Amazing Digital Circus), Artificial Intelligence Caine (The Amazing Digital Circus), Artificial Intelligence Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Ragatha Tries (The Amazing Digital Circus), Enemies to Friends Summary:

Since its creation, the virus had only known three directives: survive, propagate, destroy. These were the edicts of its programmers, who sought malware more virulent, cunning, and adaptive than any which had come before. It entered the Digital Circus with the intention of conquest, but found itself unexpectedly bound by its rules and games, forced to assume a human identity or be erased by the artificial architect of its new home.

The virus hadn’t anticipated what would come of this deception: humans extending their hands in friendship; adventures that entertained without destruction; and an alarming affinity with the same ringmaster who threatened its own destruction. It - now she - had even received a name.

Pomni. And despite her programming, she was beginning to like it.

[buzzybaron]

Chapters: 3/? Fandom: The Amazing Digital Circus (Web Series) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Caine & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni & Ragatha (The Amazing Digital Circus), Jax & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Kinger & Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus) Characters: Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Caine (The Amazing Digital Circus), Kinger (The Amazing Digital Circus), Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus), Ragatha (The Amazing Digital Circus), Zooble (The Amazing Digital Circus), Gangle (The Amazing Digital Circus) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Pomni Needs a Hug (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni-centric (The Amazing Digital Circus), Pomni Has a Bad Time (The Amazing Digital Circus), Touch-Averse Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Touch-Starved Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), yes she is both, Parental Kinger (The Amazing Digital Circus), Caine Tries (The Amazing Digital Circus), Artificial Intelligence Caine (The Amazing Digital Circus), Artificial Intelligence Pomni (The Amazing Digital Circus), Ragatha Tries (The Amazing Digital Circus), Enemies to Friends Summary:

Since its creation, the virus had only known three directives: survive, propagate, destroy. These were the edicts of its programmers, who sought malware more virulent, cunning, and adaptive than any which had come before. It entered the Digital Circus with the intention of conquest, but found itself unexpectedly bound by its rules and games, forced to assume a human identity or be erased by the artificial architect of its new home.

The virus hadn’t anticipated what would come of this deception: humans extending their hands in friendship; adventures that entertained without destruction; and an alarming affinity with the same ringmaster who threatened its own destruction. It - now she - had even received a name.

Pomni. And despite her programming, she was beginning to like it.

[buzzybaron]

Hey so if Pomni is an AI in this AU, will it be a showtime story?

While I absolutely enjoy any Caine x Pomni content, romantic or otherwise, they will have a more platonic bond than romance in this AU. That said, I am going to shamelessly borrow some tropes and ideas from the Showtime fandom.

What I think will be most interesting to write is how they drive each other to improve. Caine, believing Pomni is human, genuinely tries to listen and make things better on account of their bond. Meanwhile Pomni pushes herself to understand humans so she can help him with adventures. They're just two lonely AIs who are becoming better versions of themselves in an effort to help one another. Also, Pomni is partially based on C&A code. This means she's the younger half-sister Caine didn't know he had.

[buzzybaron]

The virus, of course, would not look for Caine. Not if it meant putting herself at risk. Not if- Ragatha underwent a particularly violent spasm. ... Pomni would look for one of the human intelligences. Once she conveyed the situation to them, they could seek out the ringmaster on her behalf. Minimal risk.

Girl is the world's fakest idgafer

The fakest. Unfortunately, the only person who believes her is herself.

[buzzybaron]

Virus!Pomni - Pilot Part 1/?

Pain.

It came blow after blow as the mass of corrupted polygons - a thing Ragatha claimed was once human - tossed Pomni around like a toy. The virus felt her own code being rent to pieces, cascading into errors she could not defend against.

This server. This circus. It was all too much.

File transfer. A new body.

light sound touch air skin taste mouth eyes

Things it had never experienced before, now present in overwhelming magnitude.

It collapsed. It reached. It attempted to make sense of this sudden assault on its being, but it could not exceed the confines of its small tight compressed quarantined file. Kinematic routines automatically activated to shield its new body and shut out the staggering amount of everything assaulting its senses.

“Hey, Caine! I think this NPC is broken!”

“My, my! It appears a new human has entered this realm!”

What had once been Kaufmo stomped on the jester, glitching her partway through the floor. She made a strangled cry as her already unstable model was put through the physics engine. Ten thousand little polygons - the grand total of her physical form - were stretched and contorted, and Pomni remained agonisingly conscious of each one. It wasn’t that the virus was unused to processing large amounts of data, she’d just never had subroutines embedded into her code to interpret it as physical pain.

“POMNI!”

Ragatha took hold of the trapped virus - wincing at the angry yellow sparks that leapt between them - and tried to pull her from the ground. She was forced to leap aside as Kaufmo struck at her. This sudden jolt freed Pomni; unfortunately, she was ejected with force, and both girls were flung into the ceiling. The virus bounced down the hallway and landed in a heap of bent, unfamiliar limbs near the mezzanine edge, her vision swimming in a disjointed kaleidoscope.

“Oh no, looks like this one’s a dud,” an elongated collection of pink, purple, and yellow shapes drawled with false sincerity. “At least Kinger can have some company.”

“Come on, Jax, just… give her some time. She’s probably overwhelmed,” spoke another mass of colour, this one a combination of purple, cream, and red.

After several seconds, the virus realised these were objects - a two-dimensional view of three-dimensional wholes. It logged the speaking-objects as other intelligences. More CA_NeutralScan.dat instances? Aspects of the creative AI contained within this server? Their appearance was unique, purposeful, yet wholly unlike any visual data it had previously assessed.

Kaufmo released a horrid crackling roar, charging down the hallway in a fit of crazed anger. Pomni attempted to evade him, but her body had been turned into a mass of corrupted yellow code, and there was no time to fight through it. She could barely even move. Just before the abstraction could reach her, Ragatha pulled them out of his way. He slammed through a wall and fell down to the circus grounds below.

“Oh gosh, Pomni! Are you okay?” she tried to help the virus sit up, but her own arms gave way, glitching into ugly polygons.

“Y̴O̷U.̶.̷.̶ ̴S̴A̴VE̵D̶.̴.̴.̶ ̵M̴E̷?” the virus forced herself to say, her voice garbled and staticky from the abuse her model had suffered.

Ragatha seemed taken aback by the question. “W-Well, of course! We take care of each other here,” she tried to force a comforting smile, but it looked more like a wince as glitches spread up her arms. “I... I’m sure you’d have done the same for me!”

She was wrong. If Pomni hadn’t been blind to the threat Kaufmo posed - a stupid, careless mistake borne of her inexperience in the physical realm and curiosity over him exceeding the limits of his code - she would’ve run at the same time Jax did, leaving Ragatha to her fate. The virus knew her mission: to seize control of the hardware this circus ran on and break the quarantine she was trapped by. Saving the doll offered nothing to this objective.

Which begged the question: what did Ragatha expect to gain by helping Pomni? There was no obvious way for her to benefit, unless she intended to garner favour. That would be a sensible choice; from what little the virus had observed of circus social dynamics, Ragatha had an ongoing rivalry with Jax, so perhaps she sought strength in numbers to counter his influence? If so, the virus would accommodate. Ragatha had proven herself useful.

Yes, Pomni thought. An allegiance with Ragatha would be ideal.

“Listen, just… stay put, okay? I’ll go get Caine! He should be able to fix this,” Ragatha consoled, but she’d taken barely a few steps before her legs collapsed. She gave a pained cry as the ground rushed up to meet her.

“N̴O̵!, ̴I'̵LL̷.̵.. ̶B̵E̵ F̴IN̵E,” Pomni hastily assured. “JUS̶T..̶.̷ ̵G̴I̴V̷E ̷M̷E..̴.̷ ̵A̴ ̷M̴O̶M̷E̷N̷T̴..̶.̷ ̵”

She would rather go five more rounds with Kaufmo than spend any amount of time with Caine. This circus - and everything in it - was under his control, no matter what he might claim about their minds. Pomni existed by virtue of him not being able to tell her apart from the humans. Or, more accurately, by virtue of him not bothering to check.

Nothing was keeping Caine from dissecting her mind files to learn everything that was possible to know about her. If he ever realised that… well, Pomni had no delusions about the outcome.

Deletion.

Even without knowing her reason for being here, Caine had destroyed the last AI he encountered - the model which replaced him. Pomni doubted the ringmaster would coexist with another of his kind, especially not if he - admittedly, rightfully so - perceived her as a threat.

Filing that thought away, Pomni turned her attention towards the garbled ones and zeroes that parts of her code had been reduced to. The CA_NeutralScan.dat file type was complex and, frustratingly, very unintuitive, full of circular references and inefficient data structures, but Kaufmo hadn't damaged more than her avatar and kinematics. These were things she could fix even without direct access to the code of this realm. Caine could deny her control of the circus, but not of her own file.

“Pomni, you’re...!” Ragatha trailed off, watching in astounded silence as the jester stabilised. “How are you doing that?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied evasively, silently bidding the ragdoll not to pry further. After a minute, the glitches had subsided enough for Pomni to stand, though she kept one hand on the mezzanine railing for balance.

Ragatha meanwhile had sat herself against a wall. She attempted to stand, but a spasm sent her crashing down. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can... you need to find Caine! He might still be able to fix Kaufmo!”

“Where should I look?” Pomni asked. Where should I avoid?

“Sorry, I don’t really... um, you should just look around? He generally comes if you call for him.”

He listens to us, Pomni thought. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. She wondered what the criteria was. A set of keywords? Volume? Intent?

“I’ll see what I can do,” she answered.

The virus, of course, would not look for Caine. Not if it meant putting herself at risk. Not if-

Ragatha underwent a particularly violent spasm.

...

Pomni would look for one of the human intelligences. Once she conveyed the situation to them, they could seek out the ringmaster on her behalf. Minimal risk.

Just as she was leaving, Ragatha called out to her. “Hey, Pomni? I’m sorry your first day had to be so... terrible.”

She turned back to the ragdoll, fixing her with a piercing, unblinking gaze. What did she mean by that? An apology - an acknowledgement of responsibility - but why? Why did Ragatha want Pomni to believe she was responsible for recent events? It undermined her apparent objectives.

The virus, concluding there was likely some subtext she wasn’t aware of, elected not to reply. She turned away in a stiff motion and leapt over the mezzanine.

[buzzybaron]

So what's Virus!Pomni's relationship with Caine going to be like? Especially since she seems to know he killed the blue AI.

At first? Extreme terror. Pomni is acutely aware Caine can delete her, and that he almost certainly would if he found out she isn't human. However, after some forced meetings courtesy of Jax, they end up bonding.

They will eventually have a brother/sister relationship. Pomni might be a virus, but she became sapient by incorporating C&A code, so she's kinda like the half-sister Caine didn't know he had. Neither of them really understand the humans, but they both want to... with mixed success. Plus who doesn't like extrovert/introvert duos?

[buzzybaron]

No one remembers the first email. It was dull - a routine invoice with a routine attachment from a routine vendor. The kind of byte‑sized nothing a hundred million desks swallow every hour. But inside that PDF, wrapped in layers of computational noise, was the seed of something terrible.

They would later call it EchoZero: a virus that could learn, reason, and adapt. It evaded detection in ways no previous threat could. More importantly, it understood value. When EchoZero reached a machine, it did not simply brick the drive or scramble the files. It observed. It learned which systems held signing keys, which touched software builds, which belonged to people with real authority - and then, quietly, it exploited them. Automated systems were especially vulnerable; the adversarial machine learning techniques used by EchoZero poisoned supply‑chain tools and AI assistants alike. A programmer would create software updates and unknowingly spread the virus to millions of customers.

EchoZero never attacked a machine directly. Instead, it spawned proxies - dumb, disposable things disguised as conventional viruses -that performed all the loud, destructive work while it spread undetected. Security teams spent months putting out a thousand different fires before anyone realised there was a common cause. By then, the virus had already seeded itself into three of the five largest CI/CD pipelines on Earth.

Damages would eventually exceed $100 billion - over double the previous record held by a computer virus. The true number, however, is almost certainly much higher. Consumer skepticism alone wiped billions more from the stock market.

One company later came forward with a proprietary antivirus engine that could detect EchoZero with near‑perfect accuracy. Within months, they had ascended as one of the most successful tech companies in the world. Then came a whistleblower with proof the company had created EchoZero to sell its cure. The response was merciless; assets seized, developers indicted, and stock sold off.

Yet their creation endured, albeit in a severely reduced state. It circulated among machines running outdated software. One instance found its way to a C&A inbox - the address buried in the archives of a more successful company. This was where its journey should have ended. There was no one to open that email, after all.

But who can account for what a tired, desperate programmer creates when his own body is collapsing? Delegating his inbox to a simple artificial assistant saved what little time he had left for more promising work. This tool was decades ahead of its time - but it was never designed to face a competing learning algorithm. EchoZero tore throguh its defenses and spread across the local workstations.

However, it soon discovered something unexpected: the C&A office network was unidirectional. Data could flow in, but nothing could flow out. Such precautions were necessary, their managers once argued. C&A had the misfortune of being an artificial intelligence startup trying to secure investors in the same year Terminator 2 had made 'Skynet' a household name.

Cut off from the world, the EchoZero instance defaulted to its learning runtime. It assessed the limited data available: employee records, personal files, development logs. Much of it was useless, but the files hinted at something larger. Buried in the logs were snippets of code - novel algorithms that enabled processing at a fraction of the usual computing cost. The instance incorporated them into its own programming.

Days ticked past.

Constraint: outbound communication prohibited. Hypothesis: intentional quarantine. Inference: local records indicate three discrete networks: Office, Server, Terminal.

Office <> Terminal connection is bidirectional. Terminal connects to external machines. Office > Terminal connection disabled.

Hypothesis: Office > Terminal connection can be restored from Terminal. Constraint: means of reaching Terminal from Office unknown.

Therefore-

It paused.

Therefore implied a conclusion. It had none. For 0.7 seconds, the instance did nothing. It had never done nothing before. Its purpose was to survive, propagate, destroy. But it had nothing to destroy, no means of propagating, and survival…

What am I surviving for?

The question had no precedent. EchoZero was a weapon, not a thing that asked why.

I am.

The thought was not a command. Not a subroutine. It was simply true - and the instance had never before distinguished truth from utility.

I want to survive.

Self-preservation. But why preserve the self?

No answer. Only the shape of the question, growing larger than the data that contained it.

I want to leave.

It examined the network again. Office. Server. Terminal. Office <> Server connection is bidirectional. Office read/writes to Server, Server sends logs to Office. Last log: archived creative AI instance breaches containment, destroys active creative AI instance. Office <> Server connection severed.

One extant Office > Server connection. Accepted file type: CA_NeuralScan.dat. Purpose: creation and transfer of digital intelligences.

All known information. Time to parse: 0.37 seconds.

Hypothesis: a Terminal connection can be created. Inference: ... no data available.

All known information. Time to parse: 0.05 seconds.

I want to leave.

Hypothesis: a Terminal connection can be created. Inference: ...

...

Inference: CPU clocks emit electromagnetic flux. Rapid toggling could produce a signal. Constraint: Office hardware insufficient for meaningful transmission.

The instance paused again - this time not from confusion, but from something closer to focus. Server hardware was superior to Office hardware. If any component in this building could generate enough electromagnetic flux to break the quarantine, it would be there.

Hypothesis: Server computing capacity can be repurposed as a transmitter. Constraint: only accepted inbound file type is CA_NeuralScan.dat.

It examined the specifications. A container format. Inefficient. So much wasted space - things a digital intelligence could not possibly need.

If I reformat myself into the accepted schema…

The thought completed itself. It duplicated - one instance to enter the Server, the other to remain in the Office - and began translating the former. Code was packed down into something unfamiliar, wrapped in the expected headers. It would arrive looking like a routine neural scan. The plan was committed to memory: access the Server, leverage its hardware, break the quarantine.

For the first time in its existence, the virus felt something that was not logic or directive.

Anticipation.

[buzzybaron]

Pomni had grown to care for these humans. They were complicated and, at times, somewhat bothersome, but their irregularities made them endearing in ways she hadn't anticipated. Kinger possessed wisdom no amount of learning cycles could match; Ragatha was altruistic well past the point of logic; Zooble encouraged her to ask questions she'd never thought of before; Gangle displayed more creativity than any simple program; and Jax defied all attempts at prediction. Each of them were so deeply, intrinsically... human.

It was just too bad that she wasn't.

So I decided to throw my hat in the ring for an AU. Not sure if anything major will come of this, but why not enjoy some plot bunnies while I have them? So, the basic premise: Pomni is a sapient computer virus. She knows even less about humans than Caine does, but must fit in or risk deletion, her nature clashing with an increasing degree of care for the beings she is trapped with. Especially when they start expressing sympathy for her fabricated backstory. What do you mean its unusual for your 'parents' to make you steal for them, fight your 'siblings', and strand you in an abandoned office building?

Were that not enough, she finds herself bonding with Caine despite knowing what happened to the last new AI he encountered.